If you enjoy freshly brewed coffee, and you want to brew the perfect coffee you can at home, you need either a manual coffee mill or an electric burr grinder. This isn’t an optional piece of tool for the home Barista, it’s literally as needed as the coffee brewer or machine itself.
I’d even go so far as to say that, if you’re not going to grind your own coffee beans, there’s little point in trying to brew speciality coffee at home. This is definitely true with Espresso, in my simple opinion.
There’s basically no way you can get decent impacts with Espresso coffee with pre-ground coffee unless you’re incredibly lucky and the pre-ground coffee you buy occurs to be ground to the fantastic grind for your machine, and there’s a slim chance of that.
Yes, some domestic espresso machines come with pressured portafilters, which are designed to make it easier to utilize pre-ground coffee, but still – regardless of how you’re brewing your coffee, you’re going to get the perfect overall experience by grinding your coffee beans freshly.
Also, it’s important to understand that pressurized portafilters are shipped with entry-level espresso coffee machines just due to the reality that they’re so much easier to use. They’re not necessarily going to provide the best-tasting espresso.
I tested this in the video below (before I was introduced to something mentioned as a shaver) with the exact same coffee, one bag of whole beans and another bag of the exact same coffee beans pre-ground (both from Blue Coffee Box), and as you’ll see if you watch the video, I could tell the difference.
Anyway, if you’re reading this, you’re probably trying to decide which is the best manual coffee mill for you, you’re probably not planning on using pre-ground coffee.
While we’re talking about taste, it’s important to likewise point out that the quality and the freshness of the coffee beans basically matters. It amazes me when I hear from people who have spent large sums of money replacing device to try to get better coffee but haven’t thought to simply buy better quality, more freshly roasted coffee beans.
Try my coffee beans from The Coffeeworks, all really high quality coffee beans, and all freshly roasted – delivered with a roasted on date, so you’ll discover you’re not guzzling coffee that was roasted months ago.
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Why Manual Coffee Grinders?
I don’t work with manual coffee grinders much these days, purely due to the fact that I suffer from RSI with both wrists. Typing, playing drums, playing guitar, creating rude gestures at other motorists on the way to the studio, all take their toll.
But if you don’t suffer from problems with your wrists, there are a few reasons that a manual hand grinder may be wonderful for you.
Price.
Manual coffee grinders start at around £10-20. Electric coffee grinders start quite a bit higher than this.
By the way, if you see that there are electric coffee grinders for a similar price, or maybe £20-£3o, these are not coffee grinders.
These things have blades. Blades don’t grind, they chop, slice and obliterate. This isn’t what we want to do to coffee beans if we want nice tasting coffee.
For more on electric burr grinders:
Perfect Electric Burr Coffee Grinders
Portability.
Good luck trying to take an electric coffee mill hiking ;-).
Another reason for having a manual mill is that they’re obviously a lot more portable than powered grinders, and you can grind anywhere, with no electricity needed, which makes them the obvious option for grinding coffee off-grid.
For camping trips, hiking, cycling, fishing, days out on the beach, and so on, all you need is a manual coffee mill and a source of hot water, and you have the luxury of being able to freshly brew lovely coffee via an uniformly portable brewer, such as Aeropress, Oomph, Nanopresso, etc.
Shot Quality.
As well as more bang for your buck in terms of the quality you can get at the same price point for hand coffee grinders vs powered grinders, there are lots of home Baristas who consider electric grinders to be a case of compromising quality for convenience.
This is partially down to the level of quality you can get with manual vs electric, i.e. you’re not investing in a motor and other components, you’re investing 100% in the mechanics of the grinding machine, meaning you needs to be getting better burrs, and other mechanical components.
It’s also partly down to grinding speed and the coffee beans not being heated by excessive grinding speed, which is something that the more expensive electric grinders have features to combat, such as being geared down.
Noise, or lack of.
If you’re an early riser, or I ought to say, if you’re an earlier riser than the people you live with – grinding with an electric burr mill first thing in the morning might not make you very popular. Grinding coffee with a hand coffee grinder is a much quieter affair, and is unlikely to wake anyone up.
Unless you drop your manual coffee mill on your bare foot and scream extremely rude words at the top of your lungs. I’ve never done that, I did once wake up with my hand over my face though, screamed, and pushed it away with the other hand… 😉
I’m beginning with the budget manual coffee grinders
There will be some folk reading this, more serious home baristas, who have no interest in the very cheapest manual coffee grinders.
If this includes you, just scroll down a little bit and you’ll get to the premium home barista manual burr coffee grinders.
A quick note about cost.
Just keep in mind that when you spend more on a manual mill, you’re usually paying for better coffee, quicker coffee and a more enjoyable experience.
If you want a cheap manual mill for occasional work with and primarily for coarse grinding for cafetiere for example, no problem.
The first coffee mill in this article will probably be fine for you if this is the case, and this is probably why it’s the perfect selling manual coffee grinder on Amazon, as so lots of people just want a cheap mill for occasional work with.
If you’re wanting to grind finer although, and particularly if you want to grind for espresso coffee or even finer for Turkish then you may want to consider investing a little bit more, particularly if you’re going to be using this coffee mill regularly.
If it’s only occasional use, and particularly if you’re grinding fairly coarse, going for a cheaper coffee mill might make more sense.
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This is one of the best selling manual coffee grinders on Amazon UK, and it’s easy to see why.
I have no idea how they’ve managed to make a burr grinding machine this cheap, however they have, and it sells like hotcakes. That’s a in fact weird saying. Why would you want to buy a hot cake? Anyway, I digress.
Size & Weight:
8.64 x 18 cm. 530g
Beans Capacity:
Approx 50g, and the glass jar will hold approx 100g of ground coffee.
Burrs:
Ceramic
My Observations
There have been a couple of sellers selling a slightly different version of this, I’m not sure if it’s the exact same mill, but whatever the case, it’s clearly an “echo” of the famous Hario Skerton plus, which I’ll speak about shortly – nevertheless given the reviews, it does seem to be a good copy, sorry, I mean “echo” ;-).
If you’re grinding for Cafetiere, drip, or even Aeropress since these days people are tending to grind quite a little coarser for Aeropress, a coffee mill like this needs to be fine.
If you’re wanting to grind much finer, for example for espresso coffee, I can tell you from experience that unless you start messing around with hacks/mods, you won’t be able to get fine enough, or dial in precisely enough, with a mill like this.
To be honest, I don’t know how they can possibly make this grinding machine so cheap, nevertheless they do, so if you were looking for an very low cost mill, this may be for you.
It’s also worth pointing out here that my friends at Shop Coffee in Cambridge, sell a similar manual coffee mill, for this and others, see:
Manual Coffee Grinders at Shop Coffee
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This is an extremely economical manual hand grinder. It’s really popular, as you can see by the huge number of Amazon reviews and answered questions.
Size & Weight:
17.5 x 4.8cm. 281.23 Grams
Beans Capacity:
30g
Burrs:
Ceramic
My Observations
This is an incredibly cheap manual grinding machine, and while it has masses of reviews, lots of of them extremely positive as you can see by the high overall score, I think you do need to be realistic with your expectations if you’re buying a coffee grinder at this sort of price point.
It’s unlikely you’re going to get a manual grinder of this design much cheaper than this, and for the money, I think it’s fine, but literally keep in mind that with a small manual coffee grinder like this with small burrs, it will take longer to grind your coffee.
Likewise, keep in mind that the finer you’re grinding, the longer it’ll take, so if you’re going to be using a manual mill to grind coffee as finely as is possible, you may be spending quite a bit of time grinding, particularly with among the cheapest manual grinders like this, with smaller burrs.
If you’re grinding more coarse for things like Aeropress, filter, or cafetiere, then you may be OK – however if you’re considering manually grinding for espresso coffee, keep in mind that a little bit grinding machine like this is likely to take upwards of 3-5 minutes to grind enough for a double shot, depending on dose and how fine you need to grind for your machine and the particular bean.
If I were you, I’d consider basically investing a little bit more cash into a grinding machine and going for one of the other grinders you’ll find in this post, which starts at only £7 more than this one.
If you’re looking for a portable grinder, and you’re not looking at spending any more than the region of £20-£30 (and there truly are benefits to be had by sinking a little more cash into a manual mill by the way, you’re not actually paying for style or branding) my personal recommendation would be the Hario Mini Grinding machine Slim Plus, which you’ll find a bit further down this article.
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This is probably among the the majority of famous hand coffee grinders, it’s been around a long time and is generally well regarded among the speciality coffee community, as a fantastic manual grinding machine for the money.
I have this mill, it was my first ever coffee mill.
I still have it, it still works absolutely fine even though I abused it by attaching a cordless drill to the top of it to turn it into an electric grinder, as I was getting fed up of grinding coffee beans manually ;-).
Size & Weight:
40.6 x 27.9 x 33 cm
567g
Beans Capacity:
Around 50g (but the glass jar will fit around 100g of ground coffee)
Burrs
Ceramic
My Observations
With this grinding machine, these observations are from use combined with science, as I actually have this hand coffee grinder, this was the first manual coffee grinder I ever bought.
The first thing to say is that I think it’s very well built and high quality for the low cost, and it grinds well for the money.
I used this for a range of different brew processes before I got my Sage Smart Grinder Pro, including for Espresso – OK I wasn’t able to perfectly dial in, however it was fine as a beginning point.
The instructions were in Japanese, there were no English instructions, which I remember finding a little bit odd, nevertheless I don’t tend to RTFM anyway, a quick look on YouTube provided me with all the info needed.
As it comes, out of the box, Skerton is perfect for a fairly wide range of grind sizes, however if you’re in reality into your cafetiere brewing you may want to look at the modifications you can make to this coffee grinder to allow you to achieve a more consistent grind size at a courser setting, such as the blue horse upgrade kit.
The grind size adjustments are big, it’s not wonderful for fine-tuning. As I said, I did initially use this for espresso coffee, however I couldn’t in fact dial in – in my opinion, you’ll be OK with this coffee mill if you’re using pressurized baskets, if you’re using traditional baskets, although, you’d be better off with a coffee grinder which will go finer and which has the ability to more finely tune the grind size.
There’s a mod you can do for this, though, which is to swap out the adjustment cog for an m8 nut in order to make it stepless. For more on this, see this review on coffeegeek.com.
There are no points of reference either when it comes to grind settings, but you can mod this too by literally drawing a line on the shaft and the adjustment cog.
Also, you could cut a marker down the nut at the zero position, if you mod it for stepless, and put a series of numbers around the shaft, to give you some points of reference when it comes to grinding again after taking it apart to clean, or dialling in for a different brew method.
The glass grinds pot is perfect, actually sturdy, it’s unlikely you’ll break it even by dropping it, and it comes with a lid too so it doubles as coffee storage.
By the way, the drill mod is truly straightforward if you want to utilize the Skerton as an electric mill on the budget of a manual mill, see the video below, however I wouldn’t advise you utilize the high-speed setting he does in the video.
I used this hack primarily to save my wrists, as I’m prone to RSI with both of my wrists. I didn’t go mad on the speed like this guy does in the video, because I’d be concerned it would wreck the burrs and likewise produce a poor grind, as this grinding machine isn’t brewed to grind this quickly.
I’d truly recommend leaving the handle on when modding it with the drill mod so you can keep an eye on how fast you’re going.
On the whole, I think the Hario Skerton is probably among the best low cost manual grinders, however you’ll probably want to mod it if you’re utilizing it for espresso coffee, particularly if you want to use it with basic baskets.
I think with a little of time watching good old YouTube & a bit of tinkering, the Hario Skerton is a fantastic manual grinding machine for the cash, and is capable of far more than it was probably initially designed for.
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Another grinder from Japanese coffee device manufacturer Hario, the Mini Coffee mill Slim Plus is a popular pairing with Aeropress, due to its more compact stature and lighter weight than it’s larger sibling the Hario Skerton.
Size & Weight:
40.6 x 27.9 x 33 cm. 567g
Beans Capacity:
24g
Burrs
Ceramic
My Observations
This coffee grinder is similar to its bigger sibling the Hario Skerton, however a little smaller and lighter.
It does appear to have one main advantage over the Skerton, even though, as well as portability, which is the ease of adjusting grind size, and the ease of getting back to a particular grind. So if you’re wanting to brew for various brew methods, this might be a good preference for you.
The mini coffee mill has spring loaded burrs, which gives it a slight edge over the Skerton, especially at more coarse grind settings. The Hario Skerton Pro has spring loaded burrs too and looks cool, however it’s a few quid more.
Remember, even though, no grinder will troubleshoot the error of using poor quality coffee beans – and now here’s another entirely shameless plug for my own coffee :-).
Utilize discount code CBNC25 for 25% off your first order at Coffeeworks
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Size & Weight:
Approx 18 × 7.5 × 11 cm. 350g.
Beans Capacity:
25g grinding capacity, 60g capacity in the storage container.
Burrs:
Ceramic
My Observations:
Clearly a similar-looking manual grinder to the Hario Mini Mill Plus, above, nevertheless at a considerably lower price, I’d be interested in this little mill if I were looking for a manual coffee mill on a budget.
Primarily speaking, I think you get what you pay for. The Mini Grinding machine Plus is about a tenner more, however it does weigh rather a little bit more which does give the impression that the build quality is likely to be more robust with the Hario.
If you’re on a really tight budget, even though, or if you don’t want to spend much on a manual grinding machine as you’re only going to be using it for a few days on a trip for example, and you don’t know when you’ll be using it again, then I can understand the idea of spending as little as you can. Personally, I’ve got into the habit over the years of not buying the cheapest option, regardless of what it is that I’m buying.
If I’m looking for a particular product, and I can see there are well-established brands that have paid a fortune to develop that brand, and buying the branded product indicates paying a higher price as I’m also paying for their advertising costs, I’ll look at less expensive brands too – but I’ve come to realize over the years that sometimes saving a few quid doesn’t always make sense and that the old saying “buy right or buy twice” is simply actually good advice.
This is also why I like buying from Amazon though, if I do buy something and quickly realize I’ve brewed a blunder, it’s so easy to return it and correct that mistake!
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Size & Weight:
17 x 5 cm. 450 Grams
Beans Capacity:
20g
Burrs:
Stainless steel 38mm burrs
My Observations:
This is actually a literally nice looking hand grinding machine, and it’s one of a few relatively low-cost hand grinders (more to come below) which appear to be based on (at least when it comes to looks) the really popular (and not so inexpensive…) Comandante hand grinders.
It has 38mm steel burrs, the same size burrs as you’ll get in the likes of the Sage Smart Coffee mill Pro, and the same size as some other popular hand grinders including the Crafted by Knock Aergrind, and just 1mm smaller than the burrs found in the Comandante grinders.
I in truth like the look of the wooden knob, that’s probably more comfortable than using some of the hand grinders with small plastic knobs.
I also simply like the look of the little travel case this grinding machine neatly slots into. For the cost, this isn’t a bad shout at all in my simple opinion.
If you like this type of Comandante style design of hand grinding machine, holster your debit card for now, as there are a couple more for simply a few quid extra a little further on in this best hand grinders article that has, even more, going for them, for not all that much more cash.
Click here to see other available colours
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Size & Weight:
16 x 5.2 cm. 430 Grams
Burrs
Stainless steel 38mm burrs
Beans Capacity:
25g
My Observations
This is another among the relatively low cost coffee grinders which appear to be based on the Comandante, at least in design.
38mm steel burrs again, 5g more single grind capacity than the Normcore.
The manufacturer claims that they’ve minimised fines and improved grind uniformity with burr blades (or teeth) in 55-58HRC hardness in 5-axis CNC machining. Likewise, they’ve made grinding easier & smoother with the bearings fitted.
So this mill appears to talk the talk. I’ve not tried it, so I can’t confirm it walks the walk, however it has some best reviews.
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The Porlex Mini is an exceptionally popular grinder, especially among coffee loving nomads, or just Aeropress owners who like to brew coffee when they’re out & about.
The mini basically fits inside the Aeropress, meaning you can pack it that way, which comes in handy for space saving when you’re out and about with it (even though it’s not the only manual coffee mill with this feature).
Size & Weight:
15 x 9.2 x 5.4 cm. 310 Grams
Burrs
Ceramic
Beans Capacity:
20g
My Observations
The Porlex Mini is a in reality popular coffee grinder among Aeropress users, it’s been around rather some time, and though I’ve never had one, my opinion of these grinders, based purely on reputation, is that they’re well built and long lasting grinders for the price, and that the newer version is crafted to last longer, being crafted to avoid an issue which could happen after a while with the original version – rounding off of the handle mount.
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The bigger sibling of the Porlex mini II, the tall is capable of grinding 30g in one go vs 20g with the mini.
Size & Weight:
19.5 x 8.6 x 5.3 cm. 400 Grams
Beans Capacity:
20g
Burrs
Ceramic
My Observations
There’s not a ideal deal to say about the Porlex mini vs the Porlex tall, other than the tall is taller 😉 and that it can grind more in one go.
The grind capacity of the mini is 20g vs 30g for the tall. The tall is the same diameter as the mini, so it will still fit in the Aeropress, but it’s 5.5cm taller.
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Size & Weight:
13.86cm x 4.6cm. 385g
Beans Capacity:
20g
Burrs
420-grade stainless steel, 38mm.
My Observations
The Q2, as its bigger brother the JX series that I’ll speak about shortly, is an really smart looking hand mill!
With stainless burrs, and an Aluminium alloy body, we’re getting into some good quality materials with this grinding machine, and again a similar design at least visually to the Comandante.
This grinder has 30 grind adjustments, and a dual bearing shaft, and is designed to be really quickly & actually taken apart for cleaning.
If you’re fairly serious about your coffee, but not rather serious enough to spend over double the cost on the aforementioned Comandante mill, I do think the Q2 and the JX (coming up shortly) are grinders that you must consider.
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This is another mill really popular paired with the Aeropress as with the Porlex Mini.
The aergrind by Knock, invented by Peter Kilpatrick, was launched via an exceptionally successful Kickstarter campaign in March 2017 and has had the majority of praise by users.
Knock started off with their hugely popular coffee grinder, Hausgrind, and then brought out a portable hand grinding machine known as the Feldgrind, which is also very popular.
Peter then decided a better, more portable hand grinding machine was needed to pair with Aeropress, and aergrind was born.
Size & Weight:
13.6cm x 4.6cm. 330g
Beans Capacity:
30g
Burrs
38mm Specially treated Nerost Black Steel
My Observations
I’ve got this coffee mill, as I said earlier I don’t work with manual grinders much, definitely not due to the reality that I’m lazy, honest guv, but I’ve struggled with my wrists for years.
I’m a drummer, as I spoken about earlier, and I play guitar (badly), I type a lot, obviously, and I used to do kickboxing too, I think it all got a little bit too much for my wrists. They’re not too bad these days but I do have to watch it, I feel the RSI starting to flare up again occasionally.
But I’ve used this mill, as I wanted to get hold of one and have a go with it, given that it’s among the very small number of things coffee-related been manufactured in the UK, I thought it would be rude of me not to try it.
It did take me ages to get hold of one, as Made by Knock are a victim of their own success, I think a lot of the time they struggle to meet the demand, which is a good problem to have, I suppose.
It’s clearly an extremely well brewed manual grinder. It’s fairly quick, it’s one of the nicer manual grinders to utilize in terms of how it feels in the hand when grinding, and it’s easy to dial in the grind. It’ll go fine enough for espresso coffee too, I’ve managed to choke a Sage Bambino Plus with it, so that’s a really fine grind.
I think if you’re looking for a portable hand coffee mill for use with the Aeropress (the deal with slips off and fits in the rubber sleeve) I do think the Aergrind is a good option for the dosh.
Aeropress Review
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Size & Weight:
15.8cm x 5.7cm. 650g
Beans Capacity:
35g
Burrs
304-Grade Stainless steel, 48mm.
My Observations
This is the smaller of two manual grinders in this range, the JX. The Jx Pro is below, and that one is worth looking at particularly if you’re looking for a manual coffee mill for espresso.
With 48mm steel burrs, this is a serious hand grinding machine. This is the same size burrs as the OE Lido, an exceptionally highly regarded and much more expensive manual coffee mill.
As its mildly smaller brother the Q2, it’s made from decent materials, stainless steel, Alumnium alloy & the wooden deal with – and with the deal with design & the big burrs, this is going to grind coffee quite a little bit quicker than many the other manual grinders spoken about on this page.
Literally have a read through some of the Amazon reviews, including the one from an engineer who has owned five other manual grinders. This guy rates this as the perfect manual coffee mill by far, and refers to effortless and fast grinding.
The majority of the other Amazon reviews are along similar lines, primarily praise for the build quality and for how easy and fast to grind it is.
If you do a little of research study about this coffee grinder – or don’t bother, as I’ve already done it for you 🙂 – you’ll primarily end up with the impression that this is a heck of the majority of manual coffee grinder for the price, given that it’s simply over half the price of the Comandante C40.
Dave Corby’s review of this grinder, below, is well worth a watch. He’s reviewed this one, and the pro version, and if you’re not familiar with Dave Corby, he’s an expert on coffee grinders and espresso coffee machines, manufacturers consult with him when they’re developing stuff, and rely on his expertise to tell them how to make their products work better, so this is a guy whose opinion is worth listening to.
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Size & Weight:
18cm x 5.7cm. 780g
Beans Capacity:
35g
Burrs
304-Grade Stainless steel, 48mm.
My Observations
So this is the “pro” version of the JX, above. The pro is a bit taller, 18cm tall vs 15.8 tall – and the grind adjustment on the pro is on the top vs the JX with the adjustment underneith.
The main difference, even though, is that the pro has double the grind adjustments, meaning that it literally has half step adjustments allowing you to more finely fix the grind.
The JX has grind adjustments at 25 microns per click, while it’s 12.5 per click for the Pro, so this will just allow you to finely tune more when dialing in. If you’re looking for a manual grinder for pourover, for example, you’re possibly not going to be as interested in this finer adjustment.
This is a meaty coffee grinder, as Dave Corbey puts it in his YouTube review. At 780g, you wouldn’t want to drop it on your foot! ;-).
Best Manual Coffee Grinders in the UK – Conclusion
So there we have it, what I believe to be the perfect manual coffee grinders right now, from the extremely cheapest up to some of the perfect premium or “prosumer” manual coffee grinders.
There are a couple of other grinders that I’d like to include here.
One of them is the Comandante C40. I make references to this coffee mill, however I’m not including it at the moment as it seems to be really scarcely available in the UK basically now, and the only listing I can find for it on Amazon appears to be a UK seller trying to charge over double the RRP.
Another is the Orphan Espresso Lido grinders. As with the Comandante, these grinders are really popular among the more serious home baristas.
But I can’t find anyone in the UK with stock, and I don’t want to annoy people by telling them about this best coffee grinder that they can’t get from anywhere.
If this changes with either or both of the above, I’ll add these grinders to this article in the future.
Before I sign off though, I’ll just address a few common questions about manual coffee grinders.
How do you troubleshoot manual coffee grinders?
This will depend on the particular grinding machine, they’ll all have some form of adjustment, whether that’s simply an adjustment nut or wheel & whether there are numbered adjustments will depend on which mill you’ve got. What you’ll need to do first is find your zero position, in other words, find the point at which the burrs are as close together as they’ll possibly go. If your mill has markings from fine to course, in the form of sized dots or numbers, you’ll understand this immediately – if not you’ll basically have to do some experimenting to figure out where the zero point is.
This video shows you how to troubleshoot the Hario Skerton manual mill, and you’ll probably find it’s the same on similar style manual grinders:
The video below shows you how to fine-tune the Brewed By Knock aergrind, and this will likewise show you how to adjust their other manual grinders:
This video will show you how to modify the 1Z Presso JX & JX Pro
What is the perfect manual grinder?
Hopefully, by this point, you’ve got a much better idea of which manual grinder might be the best for you, but perfect is a subjective thing – there isn’t a “best” as such.
I in truth think that when people are searching for something this way, generically searching for what is the best <whatever>, it shows that they’re probably not at a point that they fully understand exactly what it is they’re looking for. For example, let’s say you’re looking to buy a car – would you search for the best car? I don’t think you would, because you probably know enough about cars and what you want from them to allow you to search for far more specific things.
If you’re searching for the perfect portable manual coffee mill for Aeropress for example, that to me says you really find out what you’re looking for – and that’s a quite humble question to address, the made by Knock Aergrind above or the Porlex mini ii are generally regarded as one of the perfect portable hand grinders for Aeropress.
If you’re searching for the best manual coffee mill for espresso coffee, again this is a much more detailed matter so it’s easier to respond to. When it comes to espresso what I’d be looking at is the size of the burrs (the larger the burr size means the less time you’ll be grinding for, as finer espresso coffee grinding takes longer), the number of grind settings (to allow you to more finely tune the grind, which is more important for espresso coffee), and I’d be looking for video reviews from people who’re showing the coffee grinder being used for espresso coffee, like the video above showing Dave Corbey pulling a shot he’s in reality surprised by, with the 1ZPresso JX Pro.
If what you’re literally after is the perfect cheap manual grinding machine, meaning that you’re just looking at the best bang for your buck, then the first few grinders I talk about above may be exactly what you’re after, however I would suggest that you figure out first, exactly what you need from the coffee grinder as well as affordability.
For example, if you’re wanting the cheapest option possible but you’re wanting a super fine grind, fast grinding (so bigger burrs), and fine tuning, you may be expecting too much from a hand grinder at the money you’re looking at spending, so you may need to attack the piggy bank.
How to clean a manual coffee mill?
In my modest opinion, as long as you don’t work with anything wet – like water, which is usually fairly wet… you can’t in reality go wrong. With some manual grinders, it’s just a case of taking them to their a lot of coarse setting and offering the burrs a brush, although with most you can take them apart easily and give the burrs a basically good clean – just make sure you keep a note of how it goes back together and make sure you don’t lose any bits!
I did this with one of my electric coffee grinders, lately – primarily due to the fact that I’m a complete pillock. I took my Niche Zero apart to clean it, took the burrs out, and then I tipped it upside down into the compost and slapped it on the backside, to knock as a number of of the bits out before I continued cleaning it. I forgot I’d done that, and then spent about an hour scratching my head & wondering what had happened to the springs, which were now in the really early stages of biodegrading ;-). Don’t stress, I retrieved them.
The one no-no is water, please don’t dunk your grinding machine in water or put it in the dishwasher. If you have a Google for your brand or a similar brand, you’ll find loads of videos on YouTube showing you how to disassemble, clean, and reassemble manual coffee grinders, like this one on the Timemore C2:
How long does it take to grind utilizing a manual coffee mill?
How long is a piece of string? Ha! ;-). The address to that, by the way, is half its length times two. Joking apart, this will depend, primarily on how much coffee you want to grind, how fine or coarse you want to grind it, and the size of the burrs.
Grinding coarse for espresso or large batch filter brewing for example will take the least amount of time per gram, while grinding fine for espresso will take a lot longer. Dave Corbey shares in his video review of the 1ZPresso JX Pro that it took him about 30 seconds to grind 17 grams for a double shot of espresso coffee. It took me simply over a minute to grind 18g utilizing the Made by Knock Aergrind for espresso. How long it’ll take with other grinders will depend on the size of the burrs, how much you’re grinding and how finely you’re grinding.
How long do manual grinders last for?
Much longer than electric coffee grinders! Among the fantastic things about manual coffee grinders is that they’re really humble, there’s really little in the way of complicated parts that may break at any time. With electric grinders, there’s so much more that can go wrong with them, issues with the electrics, issues with the motor, issues with the gearing & so on – and this isn’t the case at all with good old fashioned manual grinders.
Truly, although I’ve said a couple of times that I don’t tend to utilize manual grinders – I have loads of them ;-), I in fact have a little of a collection of older manual grinders, they date back to the 1940s, 50s, and 60s, and a lot of of them still work…
OK, this isn’t to say those hand grinders you buy now are made to last quite this long, however really, in some cases, I think they’ll possibly last even longer, as the majority of the original manual grinders were brewed with wooden housings, that tend to be the weakest link, and a number of of the many popular manual grinders these days are crafted from metal or hard-wearing plastic.
You may think that all burrs will wear, regardless of whether they’re hand-powered or electric powered, and that’s true, the burrs in manual hand grinders will wear over time – but they’re likely to wear much less than burrs in electric machines, as they’re put under a lot less fret when they’re hand powered.
The hand power vs electric power is one of the main reasons manual grinders will last so long, not literally because it’s easier on the burrs, nevertheless it’s easier on everything. When something breaks in an electric grinder, it’s usually due to the fact that something occurs thanks to the power of the motor.
For example, an under roasted bean or a pebble, or a random piece of copper (which caused a little bit of a mess in among my grinders a while back, no idea where that came from!) can jam the burrs, and the power of the motor will force them to keep going, leading to something having to give – often it’s a weak cog that gives, which is actually put in to act similar to a fuse so that this affordable part breaks instead of something which would be more costly to replace.
When you’re manually grinding, if something like this takes place, you’re unlikely to have the power to break the coffee mill, and as you’re always single dosing with manual grinders (obviously they don’t have hoppers) you’re far more likely to notice a foreign object in your hand as you’re loading it into the grinding machine anyway.
Why do some manual grinders cost so much more than others?
When you look through the grinders above, you may be confused as to how there can be such a massive difference between the cheapest and the most expensive grinders, and the modest respond to to that is, that you get what you pay for.
Again, I think this issue comes from a little bit of a lack of knowledge or knowledge of a particular product, and that’s not a put down of any sort.
Let’s utilize cars again as an analogy. Many of us are fully aware of the fact that there is a huge price range when it comes to cars, so many us wouldn’t be surprised to find that you can buy a brand new car for under ten grand, or you could buy one for twenty grand, thirty grand, even a couple of hundred grand if you like.
But when it comes to more specialized products, we’re often simply not well versed enough with those products to know why some cost so much more than others. I’ve had a similar thing recently with video and audio device for my YouTube studio.
Nearly all of the gear I’ve purchased over the past year or so while doing my perfect to enhance the quality of my videos has given me a similar headache in that there’s usually a massive price range, and I don’t learn enough about that stuff to know why I might want to spend three or four times the cost on one product vs another.
I think we all appreciate that there is a range of option of materials, and this will impact on the price. You’ll notice that the cheapest grinders above are brewed with the cheapest materials, so that’s one thing – and when it comes to the main body of the coffee grinder, this doesn’t basically impact the performance. What you can’t see or feel, even though, is the burrs – and burr quality will make a difference, and these can vary in cost, hugely.
This is the same with electric grinders, some of the more costly electric grinders have burr sets which cost more at wholesale than some of the cheaper electric grinders cost at retail, so this offers an indication as to the huge range available when it comes to burr quality. The better the burrs, the better particle uniformity you’ll get, primarily, and this will lead to better-tasting coffee.
The size of the burrs is part of it, bigger burrs tend to cost more, though size isn’t everything – I once heard someone say. Bigger burrs implies fewer revolutions necessary, and less time and effort needed when manually grinding coffee beans.
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This article first off appeared at Coffee Blog – The UK Specialty Coffee Blog – For Lovers of REAL Coffee!